Sujatha Fernandes

About

Sujatha Fernandes is a Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center , City University of New York. She is the author of three books: Who Can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela (Duke University Press, 2010), Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Duke University Press, 2006), and most recently, Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation (Verso, 2011). Her current project traces the contemporary use of storytelling by social movements in a range of global contexts, including immigrant worker social movements in New York City. In Spring 2014, Fernandes will be a Distinguished Fellow at the Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has been awarded several other distinguished fellowships, including a three-year Wilson-Cotsen fellowship at Princeton University, a Mellon Foundation fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a Mid-Career Mellon Fellowship at the CUNY Graduate Center. In 2008, she was awarded the Feliks Gross Award from the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences in recognition of outstanding research. Her writing has appeared in academic journals and popular forums, including TheNew York Times, TheNation, and The Huffington Post. She has been featured in New York’s Daily News, and has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, American Public Radio, BBC, and many other news outlets globally.

SPECIALTIES

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation, New York: Verso, 2011; (Australian edition published by New South Books, Sydney, Australia, 2011. Chinese edition forthcoming with Shandong Pictorial Publishing House, Italian edition forthcoming with Agenzia X).

“Malandreo Negro: Gangsta Rap and the Politics of Exclusion in Venezuela.” Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America, edited by Kwame Dixon and John Burdick, University Press of Florida, 2012, pp 72 – 92.

“Radio Bemba in an Age of Electronic Media: The Dynamics of Popular Communication in Chávez’s Venezuela.” Participation, Politics and Culture in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy, edited by David Smilde and Daniel Hellinger, Duke University Press, 2011, pp 131 – 156.

“Everyday Wars of Position: Social Movements and the Caracas Barrios in a Chávez Era.” Colombia International 73, enero a junio de 2011, special issue on Latin American cities, edited by Forrest Hylton, pp 71 – 90.